The other day I was doing this tortuous hip and thigh exercise routine when the instructor said ” You are going to feel a burning sensation. You’re really starting toengage here.” That word, engage, hung in my mind for awhile and I laughed out loud, thinking how she was trying to frame the pain I was experiencing in a sort of positive light. However, my thoughts bounced in another direction: what does it mean to engage anyhow? I wanted to go deeper into this perspective she was sharing and what it means for me in my life.

Anytime I really “engage” in something, I emotionally connect and focus on it. Often, I experience discomfort, sometimes outright pain. My mind started to list the moments I felt discomfort with “engaging” in life, and by and large, they were times when I was in the process of growth. Even when my thoughts were dark, it seemed like a seed had taken sprout within me and was breaking through the soil to reach for the sun, as I fended off worry and doubt. But then I realized when I experience some sort of reverie with life’s hidden wonders and was seized with joy, this too was a wonderful form of engagement. It felt like a glorious moment of magic and I become captivated with the endless miracles that orchestrate life.

I recognize that most of the time I am disengaged, absorbed with the routines and mundane habits I have created, the middle between those extremes of pain and joy. Which leads me to this ridiculous goal that I set last year–to experience and document over 100 acts of pure miracle and magic that occur in my life. The point of this goal was to develop a mental practice of detecting the good of life, to bear witness to all the ways that the universe conspires on my behalf with my experience. It’s not the same sort of thing as gratitude, but it was more to do with being captivated and in awe of life. I just called it “ridiculous” because it’s probably been the most difficult goal I ever set. I have 14 moments of “awesomeness” that I have collected as I strive to develop a “miracle mindset”, and I’m supposed to get 100 by December 22nd (my S.MA.R.T. deadline). Clearly, I have not been engaging with this goal.

So, now that I have put my attention on this goal, I realize that I have a choice. To brood over this deficiency or to become absolutely obsessed with it. As you might imagine, sitting at this crossroads in my mind, I am experiencing discomfort–who would I be if I was to really take this seriously for the next 2 months of this year? Would I become annoyingly optimistic and giddy? Is this why I am resisting this? Or am I using other people as my excuse to not make this shift?

Well, at this juncture, I may not feel overly confident of transforming my mental landscape but maybe trying to do something so daring and failing may be a miracle in itself. To stop wading in the shallows of life and go into the deep end, becoming more mindful and devoted to experiencing what seems ordinary in a new light. To have the courage to live in a state of astonishment, cultivating a different and more fascinated perspective, might be a subtle form of insanity, but I shall try to pursue it nevertheless. And now that I have shared this confounded idea with you all, I have the responsibility to make the effort to become awakened by the profound and interesting things that make my life worth living.

Thank you for holding a light of hope for me, as I become okay with the discomfort that awareness brings through this pursuit for awe.